University of South Florida Projects

Car sharing has been recognized as a missing link to sustainable transportation that integrates flexibility, mobility and accessibility from private vehicles and economy and sustainability from public transits. The environmental and social benefits of car sharing can be further enhanced by using electric vehicles (EVs). This research aims to propose methodologies and tools for planning, designing and operating EV sharing systems, considering the interdependent relationships among the EV service, the power system, and society. The focus of this research is one-way station based EV sharing. These developments expect to promote clean energy transportation and shared mobility in society.

National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) regulates that transportation authorities are responsible for managing the stormwater runoff that carries pollutants from the transportation-adjacent land and vehicles. The proper stormwater management can help control flooding and the runoff pollutants that may impair water environment and threaten the ecosystem and human health. Green infrastructure is a stormwater management approach with many economic and human health benefits including: flood mitigation, erosion control, improved water quality, groundwater recharge, reduced energy demand during construction, enhanced aesthetics and access to green space, and preferred aquatic (fish) habitat.

This proposed project intends to develop a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework for pavement maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) technologies. Pavement is a key component of transportation infrastructure and accounts for a large portion of annual agency expenditure on transportation infrastructure maintenance. Traditional scheduling of pavement M&R activities is primarily based on minimization of life cycle cost incurred by both agencies and users. Environmental impact of pavement is typically ignored. This project will define the functional unit, develop the LCA modules of pavements, identify and develop needed data sources, and develop time-variant models to quantify the environmental impact of pavement, in terms of energy consumption and emission originating during the entire pavement life cycle. Outcomes from this project can provide guidance on rational pavement M&R policies that reduce the environmental impact of pavement on the society. The developed framework will be used to evaluate and optimize pavement M&R alternatives and compare results with those from traditional approaches that are based on life cycle cost analysis (LCCA).

Research shows that air pollution caused by a large airport could be equivalent to that produced by many hundreds of miles of freeway traffic. Airplane air pollution include ultrafine sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other toxic particles, which not only affect employees and passengers on airport and residents near airport, but could spread to as far as 10 miles and cause health concerns of a significant amount of population.

This project considers network regulation problems to minimize the risk of hazmat accidents and potential damages to the environment, while considering bounded rationality of drivers. We consider government interventions such as road pricing, roadbans, and curfews for hazmat traffic and/or regular non-hazmat traffic. Consideration of non-optimal behavioral components such as bounded rationality, satisficing, and perception-error of drivers will lead to unique modeling and computational challenges. The proposed multiple-year research is in three phases.

We propose a modeling study of the potential impacts of alternative transit-oriented urban design scenarios on community exposures to roadway air pollution. Specifically, we will use a modeling framework developed previously for the study area that includes activity-based travel demand modeling (Tampa ABM), a dynamic traffic assignment model (MATSim), a mobile-source emissions model (MOVES), a line-source dispersion model (RLINE), and a population exposure model. Data from the 2040 transit plan envisioned by the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority will be added to the modeling system along with scenarios for reassignment of household residence locations to parcels near to both employment centers and transit stops. Results of modeling simulations on predicted daily activity-travel patterns, shifts in measures of travel, link-specific diurnally-varying roadway emissions, spatiotemporal distributions of concentrations, and population distributions of exposures to oxides of nitrogen will be assessed to compare potential design and transport policy choices.